


in the wake

by v3ilfire



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 13:54:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5166245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/v3ilfire/pseuds/v3ilfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cousland could possibly be a Queen, and Queens do not associate with assassins they picked up along the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the wake

They were to go to the Landsmeet the next day.

Camilla’s attitude crawled from the pits it had sunken into in the aftermath of Fort Drakon rather considerably, seeing as it had been barely more than a day. The Arl’s house had been abuzz with preparation since before the sun rose, most of the bustle keeping her and Alistair shrouded in paperwork and errand-running and, as either of them would loudly complain, away from food.

Zevran thought nothing of it until he overheard a pair of serving girls as they hauled an armful of lavish gowns up the stairs.   
“We don’t know who’ll rule Ferelden after tomorrow! It could be the Queen, the Lord Regent. It could even be Lady Cousland, and I heard whispers that Ser Alistair might be gearing up to prove his descent, as well.”  
“Maker, Tilda, your head’s in the clouds as always.”

He remembered Camilla’s words with perfect Clarity:  _Lady Cousland is dead._

Unfortunately, he was the only one to have heard them. No one else knew just how much this war had changed her, how quickly she realized that she was not delusional in thinking that the noble lifestyle was not for her. And still, she had a possible claim to the throne.

Finding the Warden was not difficult, as he heard her cackling from the opposite end of a hallway. As he approached, he could make out Anora’s voice in the same room.

“My offer is serious.”   
“Oh, tits, I wish it wasn’t. You throw me to the fucking dogs and then expect me to support you in the Landsmeet? Hah! Sod off. I’d sooner support my own dog.”  
“I urge you to reconsider.”  
“Sure, whatever makes you happy.”

Camilla’s ambiguous answer was apparently just sufficiently vague enough to allow her to take her exit. She nearly barrelled into Zevran on her way out (though he was well over a head taller than she and wasn’t sure how much damage that collision would have done anyway).  
“Maker’s balls, be more creepy, why don’t you?”  
Zev watched Anora storm out of her room and book it in the opposing direction, though not before shooting him the dirtiest of scowls.  
“My apologies, I did not see you all the way down there.”

He prepared himself for a wallop on the arm, but it never came. The brunt of her retaliation was in her displeased expression.  
“Did you need something, or are you just here to harass me?”  
“I am always looking to harass you. But, in truth, I was looking to talk to you.” Camilla nodded expectantly, waiting for his words to fill the space between them. “In private.”

They ended up in a glorified broom closet of a room and immediately, Camilla took a seat on the nearest chair. Zevran couldn’t help but notice that she still held herself like the daughter of a nobleman.

“I… I wanted to ask you something… important.”  
“You’re making me nervous, Zev.”  
“You… as a woman of noble birth… have an opportunity to take the throne.”  
The Warden nodded slowly, her eyes growing wide with confusion.  
“This is not untrue.”  
“Will you?”  
“Will I what?”  
“Take the throne?”

If he heard her laughing at Anora from down a hallway, he was sure that the entire West wing of the Arl’s estate could hear her laughing at him. There had been a pin-drop moment of silence before Camilla erupted, her entire body shaking until there was no sound left to make.

When she finally finished, she had to wipe tears from her eyes and catch her breath.

“Maker, no. The only way I could take the throne would be to marry Loghain, marry Alistair, or get on stilts and dress up as Anora and exactly _none_ of those things sound appealing to me.”

Their chat did not make him feel any less uneasy, the earring in his pocket weighing down on him far more than it had in the days previous. He found himself fingering it idly again when Alistair walked by, trying to scarf down a plate full of food as he sped to what was presumably his next meeting.

Zevran hopped off the windowsill to approach him, mindful of the plate.  
“Alistair! Have you a minute?”  
“Sure,” the would-be boy-king responded, and stopped. (Walking, not eating.)  
“You intend on taking over for Loghain as King tomorrow, do you not?”  
  
Alistair could not effectively roll his eyes with as much food in his mouth as he had, or respond quite as quickly as he wanted to.   
“The short answer is yes,” he said just before swallowing, and then continued. “The long answer is that we’re currently going with, ‘anyone but Loghain’ and trying to avoid Anora as an option, it seems. I hope they’ll find someone who isn’t … me. But it isn’t likely.”  
“I do not envy you, my friend.”  
“But you also don’t really care about me being King, so I’m curious as to where this conversation is going.”

Zevran watched him shove another couple of spoonfuls of mashed potatoes into his mouth before posing his question.

“What do you intend to do in the matter of a queen?”   
“Nffmg,” he managed to choke out, which Zevran hoped was Warden for ‘nothing.’  
“Your fellow Warden is a woman of noble birth. Have you not considered taking her on as your wife?”

Alistair thanked the Maker for having swallowed just before the word, “wife” left the elf’s lips.

“ _What?_ No. Maker, no. I don’t want to live with a black eye the rest of my life. And plus, she threatened murder last time Wynne joked about putting her in a dress. What do you think she’ll do when she has to wear one? Or several? Not to mention, being King and Queen comes with a certain territory that I really don’t want to explore with her.”  
“I am going to need you to clarify.”  
“Children,” Alistair whispered, as if the thought itself was a curse. “And the making thereof. Don’t get me wrong, Camilla is a dear friend to me, but I don’t think either of us would be comfortable with any of the things that come with heirs. Though - and don’t tell her I said this - if there was some way to have children without the two of us actively trying, ours would be the prettiest. As long as they looked like me more than her, of course.”  
“Of course,” Zevran agreed, but his smile did not meet his eyes.

Even after having talked to both Alistair and Camilla, Zevran paced his room, uneasy. The sun peaked and began to set just as he began to think his way into a hole, to despair over a situation that he was assured against (and, as a Crow, warned about).

He had _feelings_ for Camilla, and though that was perhaps his worst-kept secret, there was no denying that the thought of not having stated those feelings made him queasy. He had the earring - she had denied it the first time in the confusion, in neither of them knowing what it meant or could mean or what either of them wanted, but now he was sure.

He was sure, and he was held back by sheer terror, and if he did not do something about that soon, he stood the chance of losing her forever.

As luck would have it, there was a knock at his door.

“Ah - who is it?”  
“The bloody Queen,” Camilla giggled.  
“Come in,” he replied, trying to hide the fact that he found no humor in her joking.

The door opened and in she came, her sleeves rolled up and the tattoo he had stitched onto her collarbone visible past the fabric of her shirt. The sun spilled peach across her skin and made her radiant as it did on the mornings where they were fortunate enough to have a bed and windows to gaze out of.

She could not make out his expression as she squinted against the setting sun, even though she tried to make out the details in his darkened silhouette.

“Dinner’s almost done. I heard you’ve been hiding all day, so I came to get you.”  
“I don’t believe I’m hungry, but… thank you.”

He should have known better than to think he could dismiss her.

“You _are_ weird today. Is this about the Queen stuff? You know that’s not happening, right? As in, Andraste herself would be more likely to rise from the dead and take the crown?”  
“It is nothing,” he responded. Camilla remained unconvinced.  
“It clearly isn’t.”

She couldn’t see his eyes focused on hers, but she could feel them. The whole situation made her skin prickle.

“You know, I’m usually more than happy to let you stew until you’re ready to talk, but… Zevran, we might be hung for treason if tomorrow doesn’t go well. And if not that, then the Blight could get us any day now. My bones ache with it, alright? Alistair and I haven’t slept in three, four days? The end of all this is coming. If you have something to say, spit it out.”

He stood and kept staring at her and hell if she wasn’t unnerved by it.

“Please.”

She was on the verge of leaving him in his silence when Zevran finally stepped forward and took her hand in his. He placed something into her palm - warm and smooth and hard, but too warm to be metal. She was wrong, evidently, when she found the earring he tried to give her just a few weeks ago for some  _bizarre_ reason. 

“This again?” she said, examining the thing. “So I guess you’ve changed your mind about it not meaning anything.”  
“I have.”  
“So?”  
“I … well, you see, much to my own surprise, I found my mission to kill you leading to much more… interesting places than I had first intended. And, as things continued, over time I found that despite my training to be a cold-hearted murderer, I was developing… a certain level of affection for you, my dear Warden. I will understand if you reject me outright, but I wanted to know if there was a future for us in the time after this war. If there is a time after this war.”

Camilla stared at him, and then down at the earring.  
“ _Maker_ , you’re stupid.”

Zevran’s stomach dropped into the very pits of his being, this being the exact reaction he’d come to fear. He looked at her without seeing, his headspace consuming his senses momentarily. He _was_ stupid, stupid to think that a noble --

“I know we don’t talk about it, but I thought getting stabbed trying to protect you a few dozen times got the message across well enough.”  
His eyes re-focused at the sound of her exasperation. She was fiddling with the golden clasp at her ear. “You’re staring at me again.”

“I -- I am sorry, I did not expect --”   
“Yeah, I can see that.” Her hands fell to her hips once the earring was secured, the rubies catching the pink and orange of the sunset just so that they looked like fire hanging next to her cheek. “So, what does this make us? Together? _Engaged_?”

The last word was served to him with a sense of levity and exaggeration, but that is not how it was received.

“If you will have me, then yes.”  
“Good to know.”

Camilla had one hand on the door handle when the shock wore off and Zevran sputtered to life again.  
“That’s it? You’re saying yes just like that?”   
“Uh - duh? Yes? Did you forget how to speak Common for a second, there? Apparently Wynne says we’re practically engaged already, so… yeah. Now, will you _please_ come to dinner because your fiance is a Grey Warden and she is _hungry_ and the entire castle has smelled like food all day.”

He moved towards the door automatically, still trying to process how easy the whole thing had gone, how casual she was about it. He nearly ran into the damn thing when Camilla didn’t open it for them.

“I thought you were ravenous?”  
“I am, but you, sir, have found yourself saddled with a Teyrn’s daughter - or did you not so kindly point that out to me earlier this very day?”

It took catching the earring in the sunlight again for what had just happened to really set in. His feelings were not unrequited - she took him as he was, nervous and strange and still getting adjusted to being permitted by his own freedom to feel such things. She, who stood with him against the Crows, just as he stood with her against the Blight.

Zevran smiled at her. He would have pressed her up against that very door and kissed her had she not put as much of an emphasis on how starved she was.

“Pardon me, my lady,” he said as he bowed, and when he rose, offered his arm. Camilla took it with a curtsy, and thus the two of them finally left the room.

Nothing had changed between them. He had expected a new air, something different - perhaps for the way to look at him to have changed. But, they were as they always had been, and he felt a fool to have doubted what they had in the first place.

“I swear, if Alistair ate anything today, I’ll kill him.”  
“You could hire me to do so for you.”  
“So he _did_ eat? Fucker. I hope you don’t mind me paying you from our mutual finances, my darling.”  
“Is that accent supposed to be Orlesian?”  
“No, just pretentious.”  
“Close enough, I suppose.”

 

 


End file.
